Cone sees Gomez di Liaño as big part of Gilas future
Gilas Pilipinas coach Tim Cone said the decision to cut Juan Gomez de Liaño from the first window of the Fiba World Cup Asian Qualifiers won’t mean that he has no plans for the Converge super rookie in the long term.
“Juan is a future Gilas player,” Cone said after Monday’s sendoff event before Gilas flies to Guam for the first of two meetings with the tiny island. “He’ll be on this team at some point; it just happened that he’s still new to the system.”
Excitement grew the moment Cone announced Gomez de Liaño’s inclusion in the Gilas pool, which came on the heels of his splendid showing in the PBA Philippine Cup eliminations, including a 32-point explosion against Barangay Ginebra.
Gomez de Liaño quickly reported to camp and had been described by Cone as someone “who practiced really well.”
In the end, however, Cone decided it would be best to stick with some of his old guns, with RJ Abarrientos being one of the guards added to the two matches on Friday in Guam and Dec. 1 at Blue Eagle Gym inside the Ateneo campus.
But Cone believes his participation in the camp would bode well for Gomez de Liaño moving forward.
“What we did with him is we laid a foundation for Juan in terms of him learning the system this time and then being able to go with it next time,” Cone said. “He’s going to be a fixture on this team. Instead of saying we’re sorry to Juan, it was like congratulations, Juan. You proved your worth. You’re going to be on this team. There’s no doubt about it.
“He is really a stud. There was no reason for us not to bring him this time except for the fact that we wanted to be loyal to the guys we had,” Cone added.
Going to play in both games are Justin Brownlee, Dwight Ramos, June Mar Fajardo, Scottie Thompson, Chris Newsome, Kevin Quiambao, CJ Perez, Abarrientos and Japeth Aguilar, who has hinted at the possibility of finally ending his international career.
Quentin Millora-Brown is set for his Gilas debut, Carl Tamayo is joining the team in Guam after getting his United States visa approved on Monday, while AJ Edu will come over after tying the knot recently.
Also cut from the window were Jamie Malonzo, who could be part of the Gilas roster for the Thailand Southeast Asian Games, and Troy Rosario.
“Those three were amazing,” Cone said of the other cuts. “Troy is always amazing. I see him every day in Ginebra practices and he never takes a moment off and plays incredibly hard all the time. And Jamie came in incredibly motivated; he was early at work and worked really, really hard.”
